Quote:
Originally Posted by frenchfries
Im looking into buying a watch with a budget of 2k. What are some good brands/models I could get within my budget? This is going to be my first watch. thanks!  |
I had to check to make sure but some other brands that really are rip-offs are:
- Daniel Steiger -- these guys offer very long warranties because even if they replace your watch annually, they'll still make a ton of profit on them. If you recall above I mentioned $25 watches from China. Well DS watches are exactly that. The only difference is that they are buying them at wholesale. You could buy that $25 watch for $10 or less if you weren't obviously a foreigner trying to get a good deal.
- Steinhausen - More of the same.
- Stauer - the brand I mentioned above
One thing I didn't mention in my post above is that the $2K price point is one of the hardest in which to find truly good values. As I said, none of the $2K watches you'll find are bad and many are well made. The thing is that almost all that are well known are priced at $2K in large part due to brand recognition.
Yes there are some that are worth their price intrinsically. I listed quite a few earlier, but you won't have to spend $2K to buy a good watch from any of those brands. The same problem exists pretty well all the way up to about $3500. Once you get there, the value proposition gets better. There are then good values again at many price points up to whatever sum you are willing to spend.
The short is that 9 out of 10 times, $2K won't get you any better watch than will $1200 - $1800 will. About the only time spending $2K to $3499.99 is a good thing is when the styling is so unique that it cannot be remotely obtained from any other maker at any lower price point. The other times $2K is worth spending on a watch are:
- when one finds a great pre-owned watch that is available at that price or
- when one find a specific watch that normally sells for a small to large sum more than $2K but is marked down to $2K.
You'll have to find those on your own using the information and resources I suggested above, along with reading watch reviewer sites to learn about "what's what." I won't look for them for you.
Good watch review sites:
- A Blog to Watch (ABTW)
- Worn and Wound
- Hodinkee
- Watch You Seek
- Watch Time
- WatchReport.com
All the best.